14 Contemporary Evolution. 



it is here intended mainly to direct attention, but to a 

 deeper underlying spirit. Such phenomena are patent 

 survivals likely to long linger amidst an unlettered pea- 

 santry, the sons of the Pagani of earlier Christian times. 

 The movements of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries 







sprang rather from above than below, and the anti-Chris- 

 tian developments of to-day are mainly due to men of 

 culture and education not generally intent upon a restora- 

 tion of paganism, nor consciously imbued with its spirit. 



Nevertheless, it is here maintained that the deeply 

 pantheistic and pagan spirit with which the Aryan mind 

 was once saturated (which shows itself superficially in the 

 modern practices just referred to) profoundly modifies 

 and actuates, not the minds of the poor only, but of the 

 rich and educated, who, from whatever cause, have either 

 failed to master or who (in rare instances) having mas- 

 tered have deliberately rejected Christian philosophy and 

 theology. The result is the assumption of no merely 

 negative attitude towards Christianity, but of a profound 

 and violent antagonism to it springing from a keen, often 

 passionate, attachment to an opposed system. 



It is happily very possible to attribute this antagonism 

 in the case of many to a narrow zeal for truth partially 

 apprehended. The beauty, the truth, and the goodness 

 of nature when revealed to some men with a force and 

 vivacity new and strange seem to them to be incompatible 

 with the supernaturalism of Christianity. 



